In its second year, the employee-led Lozier Community Grant program supported 50 nonprofit organizations across the country. Recipients were selected by employee committees in all five Lozier locations.  Over the next couple of months, the recipient organizations’ stories of impact will be shared on LozierLink.

There’re more than just marvelous meals on the menu at Omaha’s Table Grace Cafe. The downtown restaurant serves up compassion, hope and life-changing opportunities alongside a good hot meal to anyone who needs one.

Inside the cafe, strumming and singing is Simone Weber. In addition to her musical talents, she serves as the operation’s CEO, having co-founded Table Grace in 2008.

“We see people coming together from all different directions, socioeconomic parts of the community,” Weber said. “We love to see that diversity come together here at the cafe.”

The restaurant serves meals to everyone with a pay-as-you-can model- every sandwich, every service, every slice. It’s that outreach to support Omaha’s homeless community that first brought Gregory Foote to the cafe.

“The first month it opened, I was out on the streets. I was at (Omaha homeless shelter) Siena Francis House as a homeless person. Someone said, ‘hey, if you take 50 cents into the restaurant, drop it in a box, you’re going to get fed pizza, soup, salad and a dessert.”

Foote didn’t just find food; he found a home.

“I was at a point in my life where I was done, I was just done. I wasn’t going to get up again, but I was offered the right hand up,” Foote added, speaking of starting his time giving back to the cafe as a volunteer. Climbing the ranks to employee and eventually a leader, Foote co-manages the cafe while captaining the operation’s food truck during warmer months.

WATCH: Get an inside look at the Table Grace Cafe kitchen, using hot meals and on-the-job training to battle the homeless issue in Omaha.

“I don’t want to work in a four-star fancy place. I want to stay where I can help and provide meals to everybody, just as much as I was provided a meal when I first started coming here,” Foote said. With the success of people like Foote, Table Grace created a restaurant training program, giving people without a path forward the opportunity to learn hands-on kitchen skills.

“We can assist them with everything they need to know in the kitchen,” Weber said. “Knife skills, how to work with the community, how to work under pressure and how to perform food handling and all of that.” Successful graduates of the ten-day program receive a $500 stipend to aid in the job hunt- cab fare, housing down payment, whatever it takes.

“As we’ve been able to offer that incentive, more people are completing the program and are actually going on to find work,” Weber observed.

The stipend is funded in part through financial support from the 2023 Lozier Community Grant program. Table Grace is one of 15 operations receiving assistance from the Omaha committee. Weber commended the Lozier staff for supporting the operation through the years, giving hope to men and women who often have none.

“The Lozier Grant helps us to continue to provide meals that matter to those patrons every day,” Weber said. “It is really humbling to see professional people, funders, the whole community at large get so excited and continue over and over and over again to be abundantly generous.

Click here to learn more about Table Grace and the operation’s mission to defeat homelessness through food. To learn more about the Lozier Community Grant program, click here.